Skip to main content
Main

White Fricassee of Chicken

Chicken pieces simmered until tender and served in a white milk gravy thickened with flour and egg yolks, over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

White Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cover the chicken pieces with boiling water in a kettle.

  2. Simmer slowly until tender, leaving the cover half off to reduce the gravy.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Lift out the chicken and place it on a platter on toasted bread.

Make the gravy

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook slowly for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and gradually add the milk, mixing well.

  4. Pour the mixture back into the kettle and bring to a boil.

  5. Add more salt and pepper if needed.

  6. Let the gravy boil for 2-3 minutes.

  7. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the chicken and toast.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow simmering in the water.
Butter
Fat that carries the flavour and, with the flour, forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked in butter and combined with the milk.
Milk
Liquid that, with the flour roux, becomes the creamy body of the gravy.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the gravy, adding richness and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks can curdle and turn grainy if they overheat, so they are added after the gravy comes off the heat to keep it smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter, flour, milk, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, flour, milk, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes